How Unfortunate

Maybe, just maybe, the S&P downgrade and the subsequent market meltdown will convince the Republican Party that their experiment in holding the economy hostage until their demands were met was a bad idea. Nah. Not gonna happen. The Tea Party true believers now have a weapon they can use to force their will on their own party and on the nation, no matter what the consequences. If Obama and the Democrats don’t develop the will to stand up to them, this is going to repeat itself over and over again. Get used to it, and to the economy continuing to suffer as Washington fails to come up with rational solutions. And, sadly, the repeated show of weakness by Obama will likely be his undoing in 2012.

Post navigation

14 thoughts on “How Unfortunate”

Spot On, Ed. Fanatic, cretinous Reagan/Rand/Bush Mythology mixed with barely concealed Revelationism, and a shy admiration of the Taliban’s religious fervor, has been harnessed by the Citizen’s United gang to the detiment of Civilzation itself. By screaming the loudest, the Dittohead Teabagger amateurs are finishing what Bush started, driving the United States into the rocks of history. May G-d have mercy on us all.

Unless I am badly misinformed, the S&P downgrade was a result of the projected cuts not being deep enough which is just the opposite of the scenerio that you project with this cartoon. I certainly agree with Trevor that this cartoon would be accurate if you had used one elephant and one donkey.

Don, new revenues could easily lower the debt. Spending cuts can only lower the debt when we start taking in more than we are shelling out and have a surplus instead of a deficit. If we take in and spend the same amount – the debt remains forever. You can’t take in without taxes. please note – S&P Report, Page 4:

“We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.”

Kent–When a right winger is convinced, please don’t confuse them with facts. It just tends to get them aroused, and might interfere with his sleep.

As one who reads a lot of columns and cartoons from around the country and the world, one of the things that has continued to amaze me is how quickly the latest US rightwing/Republican spin ot talking point gets into the commentariat.

The latest spin/lie is: “both parties are are fault”. That is–plain and simple–a position that lets the Republicans off the hook for their damaging and careless behavior. Kind of like the “Oh, yeah, just blame EVERYTHING on Bush!” (Bush the Lesser) that quickly surfaced and made the rounds shortly after President Obama took office.

You see, if you quickly say something ridiculous and extreme like that (which obviously “literally” couldn’t be true–either in the potential to truly blame some individual for “everything” or the probability that one person actually caused everything), it sets the stage for”overlooking” the two unfunded wars and the unfunded Medicare mandate that were specifically created and caused by Bush the Lesser and the US Republicans when Bush the Lesser was in charge of the Executive branch and the Republicans controlled BOTH houses of Congress.

The results of those two things–in addition to unwarranted tax (ie, revenue) cuts that mostly reflected subsidies or gifts to special interests (like the ethanol producers or hedge fund owners/manager)–clearly lead to the complete erasure of the Federal surplus they inherited from a Democratic administration and to the initiation and the drastic growth of the very same awful, no good, terrible, very bad Federal deficits the US “conservatives” and Republicans are now bleating about and crying crocodile tears over

As the English would likely say of this strategy: “Nothing to see here folks. Move along.”

But, there is something to see here, and Ed has caught it in this excellent ‘toon.

The fact is that Republican obstinancy–and too many Republicans following what I believe is a totally un-American governance model in a representative democracy: signing a “pledge” (to a non-elected person or entity) to not raise taxes and then actually behaving as if it was “binding” on them as elected representatives of a “never-non-diverse” constituency–caused a bad result, and it was the adults and patriots in the room (like President Obama) who permitted a greater financial catastrophe and worse result from happening.

I think folks who are retired or near retirement should write and thank President Obama for a result some current amelioratation of the drastic hit to their 401k’s or other personal stock and bond accounts that was going to happen if the ceiling wasn’t raised.

But, I suspect that most US “conservatives” in that category never will do so.

Instead, they will be spending their time going on threads like this saying that “both parties” were at fault.

Or whatever is the latest thing Republican tools and useful idiots are being told to spout.

I think you’re conflating your view of what the problem is with what S&P’s outlook on the US gov’t. was. Their outlook was that massive government dysfunction (that is, inability to pass routine legislation thanks to 2010 congressional freshmen and some older converts) means that this problem is still ongoing. More needs to be done to fix the debt, obviously, and because of the political situation they realized this was very unlikely/difficult when revenue increases were off the table. As an organization that deals with numbers (though they may get it wrong from time to time) they know that it simply isn’t possible to cut your way into the green. You would have to eliminate all of medicare (while keeping the payroll taxes) to come close.

In all fairness, the market reaction to the downgrade and bad numbers (and extremely delayed commodities market reactions to absolutely no oil disruptions outside of Libya) aren’t so much political as showcasing an inherent flaw with markets. People in masses can be just as deluded as a single person. Concern of one small factor can overwhelm a larger more pertinent factor. As we clearly saw. Still, the cartoon was right in that the cuts (when enacted) will probably cause another six months of total (that is, the total of private and public) job losses.

Chris, Kent and Trevor, if you are new to this website and you expect to have a factual, commonsense discussion, it isn’t going to happen as the thirteen paragraph, left wing rambling above will attest to.

Chris, Kent and Trevor–the preceding assessment and opinion was delivered by a guy who–on these very threads–has previously trotted out the “Yeah, blame everything on Bush” diversion and the “both parties are at fault” attempted diversion.

I wouldn’t call it that. Humility and modesty are traits that are conducive to open minded inquiries on the problems of society, not a specific narrow way of thought defined by a lack of information. Humility requires the ability to admit when you are wrong. To look for the merits of new perspectives, not clinging to the same ones.

But it’s hard. Because conservatives almost never, by virtue of being conservatives, ever offer anything new. Their solutions are either very old, proven to be ineffective, socially divisive, conducive to creating underclasses, callous or in some cases, they simply do not believe a problem should or could be solved.

I would say that perhaps you’re confusing the aforementioned traits with politeness in conversation, not some sort of deeper character trait.